May is one of my favorite months – not only because it is the month of my birth😊 , but living in the northeast US for all of my life before coming to Kenya, May is the time when the page on winter has definitively turned. Yes, spring technically begins in April, but we have had a number of blizzards in April during my lifetime. For that reason alone, April is eliminated from the discussion. Mother’s Day is celebrated in May. May is the time when flowers bloom and of new beginnings. Even in Mombasa, May is the time when the oppressive heat and humidity of the hot season breaks. The weather becomes absolutely perfect this time of year.
May is also the month when the Church honors the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph the Worker. May is when the great Solemnity of Pentecost and the Feast of the Ascension are often celebrated. The Feast of the Holy Trinity is celebrated the Sunday after Pentecost, which also sometimes falls in May. In 2021 with Easter celebrated at the beginning of April, the Feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost and the Trinity Sunday were all celebrated in May.
There are also many great feast days of saints in May including St. Damien of Molokai, whose memorial falls on my birthday. Father Damien died of leprosy at the age of 49 while caring for the spiritual and physical needs of victims of leprosy in Hawaii. I’m so happy to have the feast day of such heroic model of charity and mercy celebrated on my birthday.
Tucked in at the end of the month on May 31, last but not least, is the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which celebrates the visit made by Mary, pregnant with the baby Jesus, to her cousin Elizabeth. We are all familiar with Luke’s well-loved account of how at the sound of Mary’s greeting, the pregnant Elizabeth felt the infant Saint John the Baptist jump in her womb.
Bishop Robert Barron recently posted four terrific videos to pray each of the sets of mysteries of the rosary – Glorious, Joyful, Sorrowful, and Luminous – on his YouTube channel. As he introduces each of the five decades, he gives a wonderful meditation on the mystery for that decade. What is a bit unique about Bishop Barron’s meditations is that he approaches them from the perspective of mission. As I’m currently serving in mission, this is a topic that is always first and foremost on my mind and in my prayers. I’m always asking myself questions like why am I here, what am I accomplishing, am I really doing God’s will, am I doing the right things, am I doing what I’m doing for the right reasons. I constantly implore God to help me to love more, be more merciful and give more fully of myself in imitation of Jesus as I do, and sometimes struggle through, my ministry work.
It may seem strange for me to be asking myself these types of questions when I have already been in Kenya for several years, but I think it is important that each and every one of us continually asks ourselves these kinds of questions. By virtue of our baptism, all Christians are called to be missionary disciples. We are not all called to serve overseas, but we are all called to share God’s love and mercy with all people while living out our everyday lives. Pope Francis says that being a missionary disciple does not mean conquering, mandating, or proselytizing, but rather witnessing, humbling oneself alongside other disciples and offering with love the love that we ourselves received.
Following Bishop Barron’s inspiration and given that we are currently in the month of May with the Feast of the Visitation fast approaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth in terms of mission and what I can learn from this biblical event. The Visitation, which is the second Joyful Mystery, centers on Mary’s response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to set out on a mission of charity to help her cousin Elizabeth.
In his Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus, Pope Paul VI reflects on the fact that the Feast of the Visitation is centered on the Blessed Virgin carrying her Son within her and visiting Elizabeth to offer charitable assistance and to proclaim the mercy of God. In other words, Mary, carrying Jesus in her womb, set out on mission.
In the first Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation, which precedes the Mystery of the Visitation, Mary says yes to God: “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.” As he did with Mary, God also calls each of us to mission and to participate in His works of mercy and salvation. Like Mary, we must respond, we must answer the call. God seeks us out and asks for a response, but never forces Himself upon us.
We hear in the account of the Visitation that Saint John the Baptist leaped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb. Mission must be done in a spirit of joy as we bring the authentic joy that only Jesus can give to those we encounter. In mission we bring the joy of the Gospel to others as Mary joyfully brought Jesus in her womb to Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist. Like Mary, we offer joyfully with love, the love which we have received from our heavenly Father.
In the account of the Visitation, we hear that Mary went in haste to share the gift of Jesus to others. As a pregnant woman, she embarked on an 80 kilometer journey over difficult and unsafe terrain to visit her cousin Elizabeth and help her in her time of need. Like Mary, we are called to be missionary disciples and bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to others – even in difficult circumstances, even when it is not popular as it most often is not in today’s secular world. Jesus exhorts us to be the light to the world.
Mary went in haste. She did not procrastinate or make excuses. She followed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and set out immediately. We are called in the midst of our everyday lives to respond in charity and mercy to our brothers and sisters when needed. Words are not enough. We must love God through our actions, by loving our neighbor, by seeing Jesus in others and having others see Jesus in us in the concreate and most often messy reality of our everyday lives. We are called to respond in haste – now not later.
When Mary set off on mission, she didn’t set out to abolish poverty or end world hunger. Her time with Elizabeth most likely simply consisted of helping Elizabeth with domestic chores – washing clothes, sweeping the mud floor, cleaning, fetching water, preparing meals, and washing dishes. As Mary’s example shows us, it’s not what we do, but that we do things with great love as Mary did.
As I’ve written about many times previously, one of my primary inspirations for the way I try to live my life as a missionary disciple is St. Therese of Lisieux – a cloistered nun who died at the age of 24. It wasn’t that Therese accomplished great things, but that she sought out a life of holiness in the ordinary and the everyday. It wasn’t that she was perfect in following the Lord, but that she strove to do the small things with great love and answered God’s call to holiness. St. Therese said that “Our Lord does not so much look at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.” This is my number one mantra for living my life in mission – something which I strive for, but unfortunately do not always live up to. Like all of us, all I can do is keep trying and leave the rest to God, trusting in his goodness and knowing that he is with me even when I fail, which I often do.
Both Mary and Elizabeth submitted to God’s providence. Both Mary and Elizabeth were pulled completely out of their comfort zones by God’s call. God asked each of them to do things that they had not planned to do and didn’t necessarily want to do. Mary, a virgin, was greatly trouble by what the angel Gabriel told her and asked, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” Elizabeth was thought to be barren and both she and Zechariah were advanced in years. Elizabeth was beyond child bearing age, but she trusted God’s plan at work in her. As Gabriel told Mary concerning Elizabeth conceiving a son in her old age, “nothing will be impossible for God.” Neither Mary nor Elizabeth knew the details of God’s grand plan for their lives, but trusted and submitted themselves completely to God’s will. We are called to do the same in our own lives. This is not an easy thing to do as we all want to be in control of our lives, but Jesus calls us to something radically different – “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Living a life of missionary discipleship means proclaiming the Gospel in our everyday lives by living in humble witness to Jesus Christ in all that we do. Mission is not about serving overseas or accomplishing great things, but responding and offering ourselves in love at the time and place God calls us, in good times and in bad, when it is convenient and when it is not. Fortunately for us, our life as missionary discipleship doesn’t depend on our own strengths or abilities, but rather on Jesus. All we have to do is say yes as Mary did. All we have to do is trust and leave the rest up to our loving Savior, who will pick us up and carry us if needed.
God is good.
During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
Luke 1:39-45
